As someone who uses Windows Vista practically daily, I've always wondered where all the negativity in the media comes from. Sure, Vista isn't perfect (as if any operating system is), but I just don't see where all the complaints are coming from. It runs just fine on my old (6 years) machine, all my software and hardware is compatible, and it's stable as a rock. Microsoft has been wondering the same thing, and after a little test, they may have found out why people seem to dislike Vista so much.

Its the natural progression of things, like it or not, almost every operating system which still releases gains a larger memory footprint with every release. With very few "point updates" that slim it down a little. People couldent believe it when they needed more than 32mb of ram, and 64mb, 128, etc.. Its some sort of shell shock that users get whenever they upgrade. If you want more features, they inevitably use more resources, dont be surprised when you need more memory. If you dont need the features, dont upgrade!

Ps. Never said you couldent do anything with under 1gb of ram or even 1gb total, and there are many things that can chew on ram other than gaming and multimedia production. But you do hit a wall eventually, and while it may not prevent you from doing your work, it surely wont be the most seamless experience you have had.